The Los Alamitos School District has scheduled a series of community outreach meetings to solicit your feedback on the draft maps of school board trustee voting areas. The maps, prepared by a professional demographer, will be posted on the District website by November 1.

Since time is short, we wanted to get these dates out to you so you can plan to attend. We especially need your support at the Monday November 4^th meeting at Rush Park.

As you know the RHA has strongly recommended that the School District keep the majority of Rossmoor as one Trustee District. You can read our reasoning here on the Our Rossmoor site. 

The schedule and location of the community outreach meetings is below:

• Monday, November 4, 6:30 PM, Rush Park in Rossmoor.
• Tuesday, 11/5, 2:00 PM, Clubhouse 3 Rm. 2 in Leisure World.
• Tuesday, 11/5, 6:30 PM, McGaugh Elementary auditorium in Seal Beach.
• Wednesday, 11/6, 6:30 PM, District Office Board Room in Los Alamitos.

In addition, two formal public hearings on the draft maps will be held at the District Office Board Room on November 12 and December 10 during the regular Board meetings, which begin at 6:30 PM. 

If you cannot attend these meetings, you can also submit comments by email at trusteeareaelection@losal.org.

The Board of Education will consider public input from the outreach meetings and the formal hearings before voting on final trustee-area boundaries by January 2020. The county and state must also approve the maps before they go into effect for the November 2020 election.

The Board is moving to a trustee-area voting system because the California Voting Rights Act strongly discourages our current at-large system. Dividing the District into trustee areas helps ensure that minority group voting rights in the community are protected and not abridged or diluted, according to the statute. Most California cities, school districts and public agencies have converted, or are in the process of converting, to area-based voting. Some school districts and public agencies have been sued for not shifting away from at-large voting. In each case, the public agency has lost and been forced to pay steep legal costs with money that, in the case of schools, would otherwise support students and instruction.

More information about the process of shifting to the trustee-area system, including frequently asked questions and a timeline for implementation, can be found at www.losal.org/Voting.